Anchors await restoration; Newport News shipyard steps up

When The Mariners' Museum embarked on a project to restore pieces from its "boneyard" full of old boats, cannons and anchors via a fund-raising drive it didn't expect the high level of donor response or the amount of anchor-polishing its under-equipped staff would face as a result.

The good news: People were very interested in giving to help put the maritime pieces on display in the museum's 550-acre park, as part of an "Artifacts in the Park" campaign. But, it also meant a museum staffer would have to strip and re-paint 1,000-plus-pound hunks of metal on a deadline.

That staffer is collections manager Jeanne Willoz-Egnor, and until recently she was removing old coatings of paint and tar from the chosen artifacts using household cleaning products and painstakingly removing rust using wire brushes. Easy-Off, a brand of oven cleaner, was a preferred choice.

"I have boats out there, I have cannons, I have engines, I have a little bit of everything, and I'm trying to get them back out in the park," Willoz-Egnor said Monday, estimating there are hundreds of items in what museum staff refer to as "the boneyard."

Eight of the artifacts – seven anchors and a cannon – have "sponsors." Willoz-Egnor knew she would need help restoring the pieces, and appealed in a museum newsletter for volunteers.

She would eventually get an unexpected response from a small Newport News repair shipyard, with experience refurbishing ships.

Museum spokesman John Warren said the owner of Davis Boat Works, Sen. Frank Wagner, R-Virginia Beach, came up with the idea of chipping in on the project shortly after he joined the museum's board in January.

On Monday Glenn Holloway, a Davis supervisor, showed a small group of visitors four of the old anchors all awaiting a top coat of paint in a warehouse at the shipyard on Jefferson Avenue at the mouth of the James River.

Holloway described the yard's approach to treating the anchors.

To start, he said, a subcontractor that also volunteered man hours to the project sand blasted the pieces.

"Then we brought it up here, we applied a zinc coating first, and then followed that with a two-part epoxy. Then we're going to apply a top coat."

The process takes days, where it might have taken months for Willoz-Egnor to restore a single artifact, according to Warren.

Historical finds

In some ways, the project is like any other Holloway and his team would embark on.

But often those progress reports have been even more frequent than that because a workers would spot an identifying mark on anchor that might lead to further historical research..

"As these guys blasted (the anchors) these marks started showing up that we didn't even know were there," Willoz-Egnor said.

On one anchor, workers spotted the letters "USNB" after the coating was blasted off, for example.

Willoz-Egnor already knew it was made in the first half of the 1900s, but she was able to update her notes on the piece to say it "was apparently manufactured for the U.S. Navy Bureau, which was the Navy's materials-support organization from 1842 until 1966."

Another anchor carried a manufacturers' mark – the name "Hingley."

Willoz-Egnor was able to deduce that the artifact was crafted by Noah Hingley & Sons, a British manufacturer best known for making the anchors for the RMS Titanic.

Hingley obtained its license to make the patented style of anchor being restored by the museum in May 1857, according to Willoz-Egnor. As a result, she was able to narrow down the period in which the piece was constructed to a 33-year-period starting that year.

Warren said the shipyard employees will be rewarded for their work, in a historical sense.

"Their work will end up in the provenance on these items in the museum," he said.